Cop deported over I.D. theft www.privateofficer.com

MILWAUKEE WI. Nov. 27, 2007 — A former police officer who stole his dead cousin’s identity to get on the force will not go to prison but must leave the country, a judge decided Monday.
Oscar Ayala-Cornejo, 25, was charged in federal court with falsely representing himself as an American citizen after an anonymous tip led the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to him.
He was arrested May 31 and agreed to a plea deal about two weeks later. He resigned in June, his attorney said.
He was sentenced to a year of probation. The maximum sentence could have been three years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Ayala did not fight deportation. He has said he plans to live with relatives in Mexico and study computer engineering. It was unclear when immigration officials would force him out of the country, but his attorney said it could be any day.
Ayala apologized to his family, friends, the community and the police department. More than two dozen supporters packed the courtroom.
“It was never my intention to do any harm to anybody,” he told U.S. District Chief Judge Rudolph Randa.
Ayala said after the sentencing that he was astonished the judge was so lenient. “It’s more than I can ask for,” he said.
In a recent interview with The Associated Press, Ayala said his father helped him change his identity to Jose Morales, his cousin who died as a child of stomach cancer.
He told his father he wanted to become a police officer after the department recruited at his high school for the police aide program.
He and his family moved to the U.S. from Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1992, and their first neighborhood was rough. They lived next to a crack house, often heard gunshots and had their home burglarized.
“I wanted to change my neighborhood, to change other people’s neighborhoods, so they could feel safe, you know,” Ayala said recently. “Because I didn’t feel safe. I was pretty passionate about that.”
His sister was married to a citizen, his brother was born in the U.S., and his parents were on their way to becoming permanent residents. He would have had to go back to Mexico when he became an adult to wait 10 years or more to become a citizen, and his father didn’t want to separate the family.
Before his junior year in 1999, Ayala switched high schools, cut his hair, replaced his glasses with contacts, got braces and became more outgoing. He says he became a different person, along with a different name.
His father died of leukemia in 2004, before he could see his son become a police officer that December.
Ayala doesn’t hold his father responsible.
“The cards that we were dealt just weren’t the best ones,” he has said. “If I wouldn’t have done this, I would still be in Mexico waiting to see if I could ever see my family.”
His 26-year-old brother, Alex, was fired from the department in September for withholding information about his brother. He is appealing.

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